Biography of Thomas Lacy, Arkansas

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BIOGRAPHICAL AND PICTORIAL HISTORY OF ARKANSAS.
BY JOHN HALLUM.
VOL. I.
ALBANY: WEED, PARSON'S AND COMPANY, PRINTERS.
1887.

Entered according to act of Congress in the year eighteen hundred and eighty-seven,
BY JOHN HALLUM, 
In the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.


HON. CHESTER ASHLEY.

  Colonel Chester Ashley was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, June 1, 1791. His parents
moved to Hudson city, New York, when he was an infant, and here he grew up to man's
estate. He acquired a classical education and was graduated from Williams College in
1813. From college he went into the law office of Elisha Williams, and was there
qualified to enter the law school at Litchfield, Connecticut, then the only law school in
the United States. Here he laid the solid foundations of his fame in after life.

  Early in 1818 he moved to Illinois, where he remained near two years in the practice of
his profession. In 1819 he changed his location to the territory of Missouri. Here he
came in contact with the celebrated William Russell, the greatest land speculator in the
western country, who recognized the abilities of the young lawyer, who argued and gained
an important land suit for his adversary.

  Russell had very large landed interests in the territory of Arkansas and elsewhere, and
wanted that interest represented and protected by the best talent he could command. This
led to the relation of client and attorney between him and Colonel Ashley, and to the
latter's removal to Little Rock in 1820.

  He was soon engaged in most of the important land litigation in the territory, and was,
by common consent, acknowledged to be the ablest lawyer in the jurisdiction; and this at
a period when Arkansas was represented by an able bar.

  Robert Crittenden came in 1819 as secretary of the territory by appointment from
President Monroe. He was the younger brother of John J. Crittenden, was a brilliant
orator and intensely ambitious. Mutual admiration and professional interests soon united
these young men in the business relation of law partners.

  But this relation was destined to be of short duration. Crittenden soon became absorbed
in the exciting politics of the day, and nursed his ambition for office with an idolatry
that admitted of little restraint within the limits of perfect probity; beyond that his
lofty nature and daring soul never enticed him. Ashley had the same lofty ambition, but
he held it in perfect subjection at this stage of his career. He was methodical,
laborious and patient in the minutest detail of every undertaking. Necessity had taught
him her inexorable laws, her imperious restraint; and prudence and wisdom had placed
their seal on his nature and made him perfect master of his passions. In the beginning he
subordinated his inclination for office, that his talents might be employed in the
acquisition of pecuniary resources necessary to support the flight marked out by his
ambition. Crittenden cared nothing for wealth and underestimated its efficiency as a
factor in promoting his ambition. Talent leading to and expanding in such opposite
directions was too frail a bond of union to continue this business relation long.
Crittenden became an ardent, impulsive whig; Ashley a cool, patient, wary, self-possessed
democrat. Crittenden was led by the fiery eloquence and impetuosity of his own dauntless
nature; Ashley by the greater brain power and the cool precision of mathematical
calculation from which nothing ever impelled him to deviate.

  The distinguishing traits in the character of the two men are powerful factors in their
respective spheres, but the ends they promote are widely different; the one flashes like
a meteoric apparition and is seen no more; the other leisurely ascends to the meridian
and burns with the fixed steadiness of the sun. They parted as great leaders of powerful
political parties to be friends no more on earth. Had Crittenden lived longer, time might
have healed the breach, but he died suddenly, in 1834, before the debris of the political
cyclone which swept Arkansas had been cleared away. Crittenden as an orator had few
equals and no superiors, and as a genius was superior to his great brother, John J.
Crittenden, so long eminent in the councils of the nation.

  William Russell, the generous and powerful client of Colonel Ashley, was the
father-in-law of Thomas H. Allen, who married his only child, to whom he left his immense
landed fortune, which made it possible for his son-in-law to become the owner of a great
corporation like the St. Louis and Iron Mountain railway. Thomas H. Allen was a young,
moneyless graduate of Yale, who went from his native New England to St. Louis a decade
after Colonel Ashley did, and there found employment in the office of Mr. Russell as the
manager of his great landed and other interests.

  Russell soon discovered his great business capacity and executive ability, and without
ceremony said to him: "Allen, I know your worth and ability perhaps much better than you
do. I want my daughter to marry such a man; she is educated and accomplished with all the
graces that money can impart. But I am now consulting considerations infinitely superior
to bank accounts. If you should, after mature consideration, feel so inclined, you can
address her and I will favor your suit. If you should succeed, it may be more
satisfactory to you to know you are managing your own inheritance."

  The accomplished bride found in her husband a rich dowry of brains and a father's
happiness in his declining years.

  Russell himself was a great man, and in any other than a field of ledger balances would
have become distinguished. His sagacity in discovering and measuring men's capacity was
equal to that of Bonaparte's in recognizing military genius. The career of the two young
men he singled out in St. Louis confirms this conclusion.

  On the 4th of July, 1821 at St. Genevieve, Missouri, Colonel Ashley married Mary W. W.
Elliott, the daughter of Benjamin Elliott, a descendant of the old apostle, John Elliott
of New England, but of the Virginia branch of that old colonial family which sent many
sons to the battle fields of the revolution. She was possessed of great, good practical
sense, and adorned with equal grace the unpretentious cabin of the pioneer and the
stately mansion of the senator.

  That grand old man Judge Edward Cross, whose life is a part of the better history of
Arkansas, married Laura Francis, the younger sister of Mrs. Ashley. These honored matrons
in our early history were cousins to General Stephen F. Austin, the colonizer of Texas,
whose name and fame will live as long as the literature which preserves our language.
They bore the same relation to the wife of General Grandison D. Royston and to the wife
of that very distinguished Kentuckian, Governor John Pope, who was the rival of Henry
Clay and a genius of the highest order of talent.

  Colonel Ashley was possessed of great moral and physical courage, but there was nothing
more abhorrent to his nature than the dueling code and the bloody conflicts which
characterized and shadowed the early history of Arkansas. Between him and that old Nestor
of the Arkansas press, Colonel William E. Woodruff, there existed from their first
meeting in 1820 to Colonel Ashley's death in 1848, the warmest personal friendship and
the most intimate relations. This statement is prefatory to the relation of one of those
unfortunate tragedies which sometimes cross and darken the pathway of the greatest and
best of mankind, and for which they can in nowise be held legally or morally responsible.

  In 1828 a desperado named John Garrett conceived great animosity to Colonel Ashley
without just cause or provocation, and publicly announced on the street that he intended
to kill him on sight. He took up a position on the street corner overlooking Colonel
Ashley's residence and maintained it two or three days awaiting the exit of his intended
victim.

  Colonel Ashley, to avoid collision with such a character and the inevitable necessity
to shed the blood of a fellow mortal, kept his house until the third day, when, as he
supposed, the desperado had retired. Laboring under this impression he crossed over to
the Gazette office. But Garrett observed the movement and followed in hot pursuit, pistol
in hand, unobserved by his intended victim. In the overt act of executing his threat, he
forced the door of the Gazette office and entered, but Colonel Woodruff observed him in
time to grapple him before he could execute his threat. He fired at Colonel Ashley and
missed him, was himself shot and died in a few hours, but the question as to who shot him
has always been a disputed one.

  Woodruff and Ashley sustained and ennobled the relation of Damon and Pythias for
twenty-eight years. During that long transition period when Arkansas was struggling and
gradually rising up out of the baneful influences which shadowed her early history and
wrote many of its pages in blood, these two men, with many other noble coadjutors,
struggled with Spartan firmness to advance the highest interests of the people. In that
great labor they became historic characters, and their fame is the State's heritage. Will
the generous and noble Arkansas of to-day, who owes so much to these, her sons, build a
monument to them worthy of their achievements for her civilization and fame? Their names
ought to be written on the dome of her Pantheon. Poor indeed must be the State, which, to
save a few dollars, will deny an appropriation to honor the sons who made her great. It
would cost but little to place a statue of each of these men in the capitol grounds.

  Will some patriotic citizen in the halls of legislation take the initiative? Colonel
Ashley was a skillful gladiator in the forensic arena. Often when his adversary thought
he had him crippled beyond recovery he would, with the greatest facility, seize on some
unguarded point and drive him to dismay and defeat. His intellect was of massive and
well-balanced proportions, and it shone with equal splendor in the social circle, the
council, the forum or the senate. There was no aristocratic hauteur about him, but there
was a lofty bearing and dignity which commanded respect in every presence. When his mind
was lighted up in discussion his countenance became radiant with conscious power, and his
auditory was carried along with the genius of his inspiration. If for nothing else, let
us kneel at the shrine of our country's greatness and renew our fealty to institutions
which prohibit the creation of privileged orders and an artificial aristocracy to deny
man the fruits and precedence of his genius and the splendor of his inheritance from God.
And may we never forget to venerate the only government on earth that reaches out its
fostering hand to an humble freehold in New England for a Webster; to an Irish cottage in
South Carolina for a Jackson; to a cobbler's bench for a Wilson; to a tailor's shop for a
Johnson; to an emigrant ship for a Benjamin; to the glaciers of Switzerland for a
Gallatin, and to the tropical isles of the sea for a Hamilton; that their brains might be
wrought with their own genius into the service and framework of the government.

  The first hero killed in the revolution was shot down on his way to Concord by the
British. In his dying agonies he prophetically exclaimed, "I had a right to go to
Concord." The spirit of this first sacrifice has paralyzed the arm of tyranny in every
region inhabited by civilized man and has changed the history of the world, and next to
the Nazarene, has blest man most. Oh, may God in infinite mercy for His children forever
preserve "the patriotic tide" that opened up at Concord and Lexington, and sealed at
Yorktown such grand possibilities to mankind.

  From the spirit and genius of such institutions spring and rise "Phoenix like" from the
ranks of the people such men as Ashley to make, and bless and glorify a nation's
greatness. Colonel Ashley was the acknowledged head of the bar as long as he remained in
active practice. He was always an active democratic politician but he never left the
ranks to seek or accept office until he had accomplished all his professional ambition
had marked out in early life, and then he sprang from the ranks, like Minerva from the
brain of Jove, into the senate of the United States, without filling any intermediate
station. Few men have ever so long held the reins of party in hand whilst serving in the
ranks. None but a great genius can do it. The active opposition always held him
responsible for the acts of the democratic party. He was the power behind the throne that
directed all of its movements. In the twenty-five years preceding the close of his
professional career, in 1844, he had achieved fortune and fame. His fame crossed the
boundaries of his adopted State and echoed, not only throughout his native New England,
where his name with that of many other of her pilgrim sons is blessed, but it compassed
the United States.

  To the great political contest of 1844 he devoted his masterly energies in the field as
a democratic elector for the State at large and canvassed the entire State. The whig
party matched him with Alfred W. Arrington, who was not inferior as an orator to any man
known to our history. But Arrington did not follow him long. He quit the canvass and left
the State, assigning as a reason for it that Colonel Ashley's masterly discussion and
unanswerable argument on the tariff issue convinced him that the whig party was wrong.
This was the tribute of genius to transcendent talent under very extraordinary
circumstances. And it was not the only compliment paid to his abilities by great
opponents under similar circumstances. After Arrington abandoned the contest the whig
party was sorely pressed for men to meet him on the stump.

  John W. Cocke, a brilliant whig lawyer, met him at Little Rock, and perhaps a few other
places, but soon abandoned the contest and left Colonel Ashley again alone in the field.
One of the ripest lawyers in the State (then a very young man), rode twenty-five miles to
hear the discussion at Little Rock. He described it to the author as "the battle of the
giants," and as forever settling his convictions on the tariff issues in consonance with
democratic teachings.

  The courtly and celebrated Charles Fenton Mercer, of Virginia, a great popular orator,
and long a member of congress from a whig district in his State, passed through Arkansas
in 1844 on a trip to Texas. He arrived at Washington, in Hemp stead county, a few days,
or perhaps only one day, before Colonel Ashley spoke there. At the earnest solicitation
of his whig friends he remained to reply to the great private citizen, not believing he
would come up to the standard local fame had accorded the backwoodsman of Arkansas.
Mercer listened to the fluent speech and cogent reasoning of the great elector with
profound attention, and when he came to reply, generously and nobly said to the vast
auditory: "I have met able men in congress from Arkansas, but none of the distinguished
ability of your fellow-citizen, Colonel Ashley. I am astonished that a gentleman of such
commanding abilities is not in the councils of the nation."

  The Hon. Jesse Turner, who was an active uncompromising whig in those days, and a
"sincere mourner at the grave of his party," says "Colonel Ashley was a man of great
ability."

  The amiable and estimable Fulton died in Angust, 1844, leaving two years of his
senatorial term unexpired. All eyes were turned to Colonel Ashley as his successor, and
when the legislature met in November of that year he was elected without organized
opposition, and almost unanimously. He took his seat in March, 1845, with the incoming
administration of President Polk. That able lawyer and accomplished scholar, George M.
Dallas, vice-president of the United States, in organizing the committees of the senate,
placed the new senator from Arkansas at the head of the judiciary committee. No higher
position could have been assigned him.

  Ambrose H. Sevier, a name forever honored in the history of Arkansas, had then been in
the senate eleven years, and was chairman of the committee on foreign relations, a
position equal to that of his distinguished colleague. This certainly was one of the
proudest eras Arkansas has ever had in the councils of the nation. The severest trial to
which a senator is ever subjected is generally found in the embarrassment which attends
his first address to the senate. We have two witnesses to this ordeal which our senator
passed early in the first session of the twenty-ninth congress (1845).

  The celebrated George McDuffie of South Carolina was one of the auditors. He was then
in the zenith and greatness of his wonderful career, and to those who may not be
acquainted with his history, a short digression to outline it will be pardoned. He was
born in humble obscurity in eastern Georgia, with massive brain and great possibilities,
and was the only one of his family ever known to rise above obscure mediocrity. When
verging on manhood he was fortuitously brought to the notice of John C. Calhoun, who at
once predicted a great future if his resources were cultivated. He became the protege of
the favored son of South Carolina, who sent him to school and graduated him at Columbia
College in the Palmetto State. Soon after this he was admitted to the bar. His advent on
the legal horizon was that of a star of the first magnitude. His fame soon filled the
State and he was toasted as "the pride of South Carolina."

  This State soon honored herself no less than him by delegating him to the national
councils. His fame preceded him to the halls of congress. It excited the disdain and
contempt of that long dreaded churl and tyrant of the house, John Randolph, who had so
long with lordly mien and iron rod ruled the house. Not long after he was sworn in,
Randolph, with concentrated irony and withering sarcasm, undertook to whip in "the pride
of South Carolina," and teach him humility and submission. As usual, Randolph was the
aggressor. He had vanquished scores before, and why not the protege of Calhoun. His
obscure origin had no claims on fame that might not be dashed to pieces by one thrust
from Randolph's lance. Those who did not know McDuffie did not think he would reply. But
in the fearless pride and dauntless courage of a great intellect, he took the floor with
perfect composure. Webster, Benton, Calhoun, Crittenden and many others left their seats
in the senate and went to the house to witness "the battle of the giants." The world has
rarely witnessed such an auditory. Certainly no young man like McDuffie had ever before
in the world's history commanded such an intellectual audience, unless, perhaps, young
Earl Gray on the trial of Warren Hastings before the house of lords. Men, whose renown
will be handed down as long as our history is preserved, paid willing tribute to his
genius and his glory. Before the assembled talent of the nation, McDuffie stood the
majestic personification of intellectual greatness with the patent and signet of the
Creator on his brow.

  As he glanced around over the parliament before him, some one cried out from the
gallery: "Lay on McDuff, and damned be he who first cries, hold, enough." The effect of
this sally from the gallery was electrical, but it fell like a pall of death on Randolph,
who, from the noble defiance of his young adversary, felt that a cyclone was coming.
Cicero's denunciation of Cataline in the Roman senate was not more terrible than the
classic fire and polished phillipic which drove Randolph from the house in dismay to
escape it. The old Virginia lion was bearded by "the pride of South Carolina" in his lair
where he had lorded it so long. The press of two hemispheres heralded it to the world,
and the world was glad.

  McDuffie was one of those brilliant creations whose talents startle and dazzle the
world. His morals were as pure and exalted as his genius. He greatly admired Ashley.

  The venerable Judge Cross, who was a member of the twenty-sixth, twenty-seventh and
twenty-eighth congresses, was the other witness to Colonel Ashley's maiden effort in the
senate. He "messed" with the South Carolina delegation which included Calhoun, Woodson,
Burt (who married the niece of Calhoun), McDuffie and others.

  The new senator first addressed the senate on the bill for the annexation of Texas.
Judge Cross with many others left the house and went over to the senate chamber to hear
him. Here let the venerable and honored old gentleman speak for himself: "I knew he
possessed great abilities, and for that reason wanted to hear him. I went to the senate
chamber just after Colonel Ashley obtained the floor. To my astonishment he was greatly
embarrassed, but I thought that would wear away in a few moments, but he commenced
choking up, and I thought was going to end in inevitable failure, and I left the senate
chamber suffering intense mortification. Distress and a sense of oppression followed me
all day. No member of my 'mess' knew that Colonel Ashley was my brother-in-law. That
evening at tea McDuffie was in fine spirits; he turned to me and asked: 'Did you hear
your new senator, to-day?' Fearing a new installment of mortification, I replied, no, and
he said: 'Then you have been unfortunate. You have lost a great opportunity for
intellectual enjoyment; he made the best speech yet delivered in the senate on the bill
for the annexation of Texas; he presented new and original ideas with wonderful power.'"

  Colonel Ashley's embarrassment wore away as he advanced with his great subject, and his
face lighted up with a halo which nothing can inspire and sustain but mental power.

  A greater theme than the annexation of a kindred empire could scarcely engage the
attention of a statesman. The matchless reasoning of the profound lawyer was then
tributary and subsidiary to the higher compass of the statesman's comprehensive grasp. In
1846 there was strongly organized opposition to his re-election to the senate, which
involved a protracted and exciting contest. Hon. Robert W. Johnson, afterward a senator
in congress from Arkansas, said of that contest: "For his success in that instance he was
not less indebted to his own strong will, his habits of industry, his energy and admitted
ability, than to the ardent devotion of friends." Colonel Ashley continued chairman of
the judiciary committee until his death, which occurred on the 29th of April, 1848, at
his hotel in Washington city, in the bosom of his devoted family. Mr. White, of New York,
and Robert W. Johnson, of Arkansas, pronounced eloquent funeral orations in the house.
Solon Borland, the successor of Sevier, and Sidney Breese, of Illinois, performed the
same office in the senate. In the oration of Judge Breese there is a simple, yet pathetic
and sublime passage which seizes on the heart and inspires a sense of profound obligation
and love for the government made by our fathers.

  In 1818, "in the then far off wilderness of the west," Colonel Ashley and Judge Sidney
Breese, then a law student, met in an obscure village in central Illinois. Both had come
pilgrims from the east to seek and make fame and fortune in the rising west. Each was
poor in this world's goods, but rich in that noble pride which leads man to the highest
heritage to which his fellow man can elevate him. Nature had given both the same titular
guides and had formed them on the same grand model. A good brain and noble ambition was
the common blessing of both. Under these circumstances the young men met in the
wilderness and formed a very close attachment; but the ever-changing vicissitudes of this
life soon separated them for twenty-seven years. The next meeting of the poor boys of
1818 was in March, 1845, on the floor of the senate as councillors of the greatest nation
since the twelve Caesars made Borne mistress of the east. Sidney Breese, the student, had
ripened into jurist and statesman. As a jurist he has left an inheritance to Illinois
which will survive the vicissitudes of ordinary fame. His attainments as a jurist for
twenty years were wrought into the foundations of her jurisprudence. Hon. Alexander H.
Stephens, of Georgia, in a letter addressed to Hon. A. H. Garland on the 15th of March,
1880, says: "I remember Senator Ashley from Arkansas well. He came into the senate in
1844, the year after I entered the house. He was a man of fine personal appearance. He
was an able lawyer and soon tool high position in that body, and was placed at the head
of the judiciary committee. His oratory, while not of the highest order, was very
persuasive and convincing. He was eminently a business man. Socially, he shone to great
advantage. He was usually one of the leading spirits of the dinner table; being fond of
fun and humor, he indulged his taste in this line by enlivening all at his own, or a
friend's table, by anecdotes which caused the greatest roars of laughter. His colleague,
Hon. Ambrose H. Sevier, and he made a noble pair. They differed in many things. Sevier
was chairman of the committee on Indian affairs, but both were sterling statesmen. Their
difference in pronunciation was very marked, especially in the pronunciation of the State
they represented. Ashley for instance called it Arkansas, while Sevier called it
Arkansaw. This was so marked that Mr. Vice-President Dallas in his great suavity of
manner, and not wishing to decide this difficult question between them, always recognized
Mr. Ashley as the senator from Arkansas, while he recognized Mr. Sevier as the senator
from Arkansaw."

  The Rev. J. W. Moore (father of our honored citizen, C. B. Moore of Little Rock),
distinguished for his piety and learning, came to Arkansas at an early period in her
territorial pupilage. He knew Colonel Ashley intimately in his social, domestic and
public relations for a quarter of a century, and has left on record his deliberate
judgment as to the character of the man. "He was no common man. The god of nature
lavished on him a profusion of gifts. To a personal appearance peculiarly dignified and
commanding was superadded an intellect of the very highest order, capable of vast
comprehensions, and the most minute and accurate analysis, trained by a thorough course
of classical and legal study, to which may be added manners the most gentle, and
conversational powers the most fascinating. It was not left optional with such a man as
to whether he would become a popular leader or not. It could not be otherwise. During the
long period of our intimate acquaintance I never heard from him a harsh word, or saw him
with ruffled temper." If one great trait was more conspicuous in his nature than all
others it was found in the hallowed endearments of the domestic relations, where it shone
with a devotion rarely equaled, never surpassed.